fonts: what is a "point" in Linux/Gnome?

[Richard Gaskin]

Richmond Mathewson wrote:

> On 01/03/2010 20:40, Richard Gaskin wrote:
...
>> I took a minute this morning to take some screen shots of Rev and OS
>> controls on Ubuntu/Gnome, Win XP, and OS X:
>>
>> <http://fourthworldlabs.com/revfonts/>
>
> Frankly, Richard, it looks as though you took quite some time and gave
> quite a lot of thought to that,
> and "took a minute" is somewhat of an understatement.
>
> It is a really good comparison: Thanks.

My pleasure.  It really only took a couple minutes, well worth the 
investment to have the side-by-side comparison to review when making 
layout decisions, and if nothing else to help clarify the mystery of 
Gnome's control sizes.  Glad you found it useful too.

>> My closing observation there sums up the more significant problem:
>>
>>     Even with the disparity of reported rendered textSize, it's
>>     possible to make layouts that substantially conform to OS
>>     standards rather easily for Mac and Win, and the text and
>>     control sizes of each are close enough that a single layout
>>     will work well on both platforms.
>>
>>     Ubuntu/Gnome, however, uses control and text size so far out
>>     of proportion to other OS standards that they require either
>>     delivering layouts sized smaller than the user sees in other
>>     apps on that OS, or making a separate set of layouts specifically
>>     for that OS.
...
> It is not the job of the Linux people to make their OS GUIs conform to
> some real or imaginary standard
> established by either Apple or Microsoft, any ore than the other way around.

But it may well be in their interest to do so, on two counts:

1. The greatest opportunity for adoption of Linux will come from those 
who've used another OS before (very few who don't have a computer will 
be installing Linux on the thing they don't have <g>).  Sure, there's a 
vast untapped pool of new users in the developing world who will 
inevitably come to use Linux as their first computing experience, but 
that's long-term and along the way most new Linux users will have had 
prior experience with Windows.

Given this, the degree to which Linux conforms to their expectations in 
ways that carry no adverse risk to usability will benefit from one of 
the strongest usability drivers, consistency.


2. For many, Linux adoption will be driven by the number of apps 
available for the platform.   While good FOSS apps will always enjoy a 
price advantage over commercial offerings, there's plenty of opportunity 
for proprietary software to be ported to the new forthcoming Linux 
audience.  And even among FOSS apps, not all are developed solely for Linux.

So just as we want to see things made easier for transitioning 
end-users, here we're also conscious of the benefits of making 
multi-platform deployments easier for developers.

More apps simply means more users for the platform.

But requiring specialized layouts for one platform slows down deployment 
to that platform, and may even be prohibitive for some, thereby reducing 
the pool of potential new users.


I'll run this control size issue by the folks on the Gnome usability 
list, and will report back anything interesting.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
  revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv